The Big '5'

Tyson is officially Five years old.

I never thought this day would come.

He is officially a big kid.

I kept telling him that yesterday was his last day as a little kid. He can no longer throw fits, talk like a baby, and now he has to pump himself on the swings.

For years I've told him that he couldn't do things/have things until he was 5. I could really be in trouble if he remembers all the promises I have made.
For example:

*He can now officially have gum. Do you remember this incident. Apparently 4 year old's can't handle gum. I really hope a 5 year old can.

* I promised to take him to Disneyland again when he was 5.


I'm not the only one to make "5-year-old promises." Deb promised to get him a dog when he turned 5.



Please don't remind him.

In all seriousness, these have been 5 of the best years of my life. This kid has me (and his dad)happily wrapped around his little finger.

Wordless Wednesday

Cake Decorators for Hire

I always buy my kids' birthday cakes.

Every year.

I usually order them weeks in advance from the local grocery store bakery.

I have always carried a small amount of guilt that I am shirking my motherly duties by not making homemade birthday cakes.

Not anymore.

The guilt is gone.

Here's the story:

Our plan was to celebrate Tyson's birthday next Sunday night at my parents house. Due to circumstances outside of my control the plan changed and we bumped the party up a week. This left me scrambling for a cake on Saturday night.

Not a big deal, right?

It's just cake, right?

Wrong.

I figured I would just run over to Walmart and pick up a cake from their bakery. When I got there the bakery was closed and I was left to choose from the premade cakes. None of them met my two rules:

1. Was made with the "good" frosting.

2. Was decorated with an acceptable boy theme.

Plan B: Attempt to make a cake myself. It can't be that hard, right? My sister, who watches a lot more Food Network than I do, offered to help so I felt confident.

I purchased a cake mix, frosting, and a Spiderman Toy from Walmart and headed home.

Four hours and a headache later, this is what we came up with.

My sister affectionately calls it "Ghetto Fabulous"

We could not get the frosting to turn red to save our lives.* Spiderman refused to look good on top of the cake, so we had to settle for him climbing up the side. And lets not even talk about the lettering.

Thankfully Tyson was so thrilled to have a new Spiderman toy, he didn't care that it came on a flaming pink cake.

I have learned my lesson. I will continue to pay the professionals to handle my birthday cake needs, this time without any guilt.

*I have since been informed that to make pink frosting turn red I need to either use a little yellow food coloring with the red or buy red frosting to begin with. I didn't know this at the time.

Cheese Baby

Every time I pull out the camera Preston says the same thing:

"Cheese, Baby"

This means he wants me to take his picture so he can see it. However, he has no patience to hold still for a decent picture. He pauses for .3 seconds before running at the camera. As a result I have a lot of pictures that look like this:

Extreme Blurry Close-Ups

Patrick and Lindsay

No, I did not steal this picture from the cover of a magazine, although it looks as though it belongs there. This is Lindsay. She and I were childhood friends about 20 years ago.

(Can we really be that old? I think not!)

Lindsay and her adorable husband, Patrick, (and Scout, who could forget Scout) are hoping to adopt. They are fun loving, world travelers, who currently live in New Jersey.

Here's a snippet from their profile:

"We like to think we are fun and funny but maybe everyone thinks they are fun and funny; in which case, we might be boring, but we hope not. We love the arts and movies and books. We like shopping together...well, not grocery shopping, neither of us likes to go grocery shopping, but we both like eating so we always end up going. We love the outdoors and taking walks with our dog, Scout. (He's real cool.) We love the beach. Nothing is better than sitting at the beach with a great book and reading until you get too hot and you have to go play in the water. Living on the beach would be a dream."

Check out the rest of their profile Here. I know you want to.

Wordless Wednesday

Funny Stories From Sheeby

Many of you know that my little brother Steven aka Sheeby is currently serving a mission in Korea. He emails us each week. Sometimes he has the funniest stories. I thought I would share a few of my recent favorites with you. (I hope Sheeby doesn't mind)

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I went into the bank the other day because my card had been having some problems so I wanted to replace it. So I go in and there's a girl in the lobby there to help people that come in and I told her what I wanted to do. You would have thought a celebrity had come in. Everyone there was so blown away that I could speak Korean. They were giddy and everyone was staring at me and the guy actually making my new card thought I was the most amazing thing ever. I made a joke to him and everyone in the building laughed. It was really awkward for me but now i know what its like to be famous.

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I had quite the adventure last night, My companion and I set out to walk to the church and back to pick up some more copies of the Book of Mormon to keep in our house. We were walking past the train station on the way home and there were a lot of people sitting down outside of it. We kept walking and I had the thought to go sit down outside and do some people watching or Passive proselyting, or say hello to people and wait for people to come and talk to us. But I was just going to keep going then my comp suggested to sit down for a little so I figured it was a good idea if we both had it. So we sit and say hi to some people and then we see this guy who is clearly drunk out of his mind. He can't walk straight and he was trying to smoke and failing due to his intoxication. So we watch him and laugh a little then he starts heading for the street. We started getting worried when he headed for the street. Then he fell of the curb and fell directly into the back of a parked car. It was hilarious. I wish I had a video but we run over there and help him up and he is completely drunk off his rocker. I don't think he even felt the fall. Anyways he take (carry) him over to a bench and sit down and try to figure out how we can help this guy. We have a really weird conversation with him in his drunk Korean then I figure we should take him to the police station next to the train station about 100 yds away. We struggle with him and get him over there. My comp stood with him out side and I ran in and talked to the cops and tell them whats going on. They tell us just to put him in a taxi and the drunk guy will tell us the area where he is from. So we stagger over to a taxi an tell the driver where to go. It turns out that's a really country ghetto area like a half an hour away so we go out there and then the drunk guy doesn't know which house is his. The taxi driver is pissed, the drunk guy is getting violent, and its like past our curfew. Anyways we find someone who knows the guy miraculously. And then it turns out that the drunk guy used to live out here but doesn't anymore but his brother lives back in Kim Chun where we started. So we contact the brother take the drunk guy there and drop him off. It was quite the experience. It felt good to help someone even though they didn't know what was going on. The taxi driver was upset but impressed with us and a lot of people at the station saw us helping him so hopefully they think better of the missionaries in the future.

(sheeb's comp with "the drunk guy")

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In the chapel of our church there are two big holes in the walls. I thought that it would be a good idea for us to fix them and surprise our branch. So if I were in America I would have simply bought a wall patch and then put stucco over that and sanded and stuff and then painted it to match the wall but unfortunately i had to do it completely different. They don't have wall patches in Korea or stucco so I had to figure out how they do things. And here is kind of a funny communication problem story. There are some words where if your pronunciation isn't exact then they don't understand you.

So I said to the woman at the hardware store:

Me: Do you have anything to fix a wall?

Woman: A what?

Me:A wall

Woman:A wall?

Me:yes a wall.

Woman:wait a wall?

Me:Yeah a wall.

Woman:"you want to fix a wall?

Me:Yes a wall.

Woman: Why do you want to fix a wall?

Me(slightly frustrated):Because there's a hole in the wall. Do you have something to fix a hole in a wall?

Woman:a hole?

Me:Yes a hole. its about this big. How would you suggest that I fix it?

Woman: Wait a hole in the wall.

Me (now on the verge of giving up): Yes a hole in the wall.

So she then shows me how they do things in Korea. Apparently they fill the hole with an expanding foam and then cut/sand that. Then she said but it doesn't look pretty. So i asked her how to make it look pretty and she's like I don't know. So we get the foam, fill the hole and start the quest for stucco. And there is a word for stucco in Korean but after going to about 4 different places I found out that no Korean knows what that stuff is even after reading the Korean definition on my dictionary. So on the edge of frustration/anxiety I explained to some guy what we were doing and what i needed so he gave me a small bag of instant cement and said that this would work. We tried it and it was your basic grey gritty cement and didn't work so we tore it out and went back to the original hardware store and found white cement that worked just fine. So except for painting it we finally finished. And then on Sunday the branch didn't even really notice. But the branch president pointed it out to everyone and they all love us now. Apparently none of them know how to do that sort of thing. And so the branch president said to them all how as fathers in our church we should be teaching our children how to do basic household things. So basically we inspired change here in Kim Chun South Korea.

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Thanks for the laughs Sheeby!

We love you and miss you.

How To Shower

Having children is a glorious thing. But they do have the uncanny ability to make the most simple tasks more difficult.

Like taking a shower.

Before I had kids I didn't give much thought to the freedom in taking a shower.

Get in, get out, get on your way, right?

Well, add a small child to your life and suddenly that shower becomes very elusive. Children need a lot of attention and supervision. Both are difficult to maintain when you are naked and wet, covered in soap.

First choice is to shower when the child is asleep. But sometimes that's not possible. Besides, there are thousands of other things I like to do when my children are sleeping. Washing my hair isn't often at the top of that list.

This is where a mom has to get creative. With a young baby, you can stick them in a bouncy seat, or even on a blanket on the bathroom floor. This will work up until your child is about 6 months old. After that you need to re-work your game plan.

With Tyson I was able to turn on a Barney video and put up the baby gate to keep him in the TV room. My house was small enough that I could still hear him if I left the bathroom door open. But then we moved. In our new house the TV room is no where near my shower. So this doesn't work with Preston. Luckily our bathroom is big enough for a jeep. A baby jeep that is.




With this little beauty and some cheerios I can buy myself 10 minutes. The downside is that I can't walk in my bathroom without stepping on cereal.

But that is a small price to pay for a shower.

Once your child is 2 or 3 years old (maybe even 4-5 depending on the child) you can trust them alone for a few minutes. This is when I adopt the motto:

"Shower fast or don't shower at all."

I can't possibly be the only mom with this issue. What lengths have you gone to for a shower?

Why I Blog

I started this blog several years ago. At the time I used it simply as an on-line photo album for friends and family to see my cute kid (I only had one at the time). Blogging was fairly new then. Blogger was very different then. I don't even think there was a spell check function.

I only had a couple of regular visitors, and rarely received more than 1 or 2 comments to any post. Usually that comment was from my sister or my sister-in-law reminding me that they thought my kid was cute.

Over time my blog has evolved. I started posting more often, and using it for more than just pictures. I started to write again. I graduated from college many moons ago, and considered myself a fairly decent writer. Since then my writing skills have gotten rusty and my vocabulary has taken a nose dive. Blogging has given me a way to start writing again, a way to keep my brain from turning to applesauce. A way to keep the dementia at bay.

Most recently, I have started writing about topics that are near and dear to my heart, specifically adoption, infertility, motherhood and religion.

My readership has increased dramatically since I started writing about these things. Who knew other people wanted to read what I had to say?! I sure didn't.

I now have between 20 and 30 people visit this blog each day. I get several comments, mostly still from family and friends. I have people visiting from all across the country.

Mesa, Arizona

Walnut Creek, California

Redmond, Utah

Chicago, Illinois

Houston, Texas

Reno, Nevada

Denver, Colorado

Pasco, Washington

Brentwood, Tennessee

Twin Falls, Idaho

Chaska, Minnesota

Newport News, Virginia

Bedford, Pennsylvania

Mankato, Minnesota

Shelley, Idaho

Evans, Georgia

Charles Town, West Virginia

And that is just this week.

I also have readers in Spain, Korea and Germany.

I honestly don't know how long I will keep blogging, or what I will blog about in the future. (Let me know if you have any requests.) It mostly just comes one day at a time.

Dan gives me grief about posting everyday. But honestly, I like the pressure to create. I like the deadline, even if it is self-imposed. Like a newspaper columnist, I like knowing someone out there is reading something I wrote.

It's very empowering.

Especially for a stereotypical, mini van driving, middle class, stay at home mom like me.

Some days I just want to make you laugh. Some days I want to make you think. Some days I just want to break the monotony that is my life. Some days I just want to feel validated by someone more than three feet tall. Whatever the reason, I enjoy blogging.

Thanks for joining me for the ride.

Dan's Calling in Life

Dan loves music.

Really.

If you ask him he will tell you that he loves music

more than the average person.

(he also thinks he's an above average driver, lol)

Dan adores his iPod. He loves to blast music when he is running/lifting weights/driving/working in the garage, etc. He craves family sing-a-longs, and has fond memories of singing in the high school choir.

Despite all this, I got a really good laugh when a member of our bishopric called him to lead the music in our ward's Sacrament meeting.

I nearly fell out of my chair laughing when he called him to direct the ward choir.

I think Dan went into shock. I tried to console him, but I was too busy laughing.

His only consolation is that he gets to put the numbers up for the Hymns each week.

Wordless Wednesday

More Easter Fun

Sunday evening, on the way home from Grandma and Papa's house, I asked Tyson what his favorite part of Easter was. Without much hesitation he said,

"Coloring Eggs. . . . . . and Jesus."

I expected him to say something about his new toys, or all the candy he ate, or hunting for eggs. I shouldn't have been so surprised that his favorite part was turning something BLUE!

I'm sure Preston would agree that coloring eggs is pretty great.

And true to his word, Tyson told us all about Jesus when we got home. While I was busy putting Preston to bed, Tyson finished coloring and cutting out his pictures from Primary so he could tell Dan and I the story of Jesus. When he was finished he called us into his room, and in a very somber voice told us the story of the Resurrection. It went something like this:

"Once there were people who didn't like Jesus. So they put him on a cross with nails in his hands and feet. He died. His friends and family took his body to a tomb. They had medicines for his body. They rolled a big stone in front of the door. Then the women came back and his body was gone. They were very sad. Then they saw Jesus there because he was risen."

Easter Fun

Saturday morning the boys and I decided to brave the chilly weather and attend the city Easter egg hunt. When I got there I realized there was no way for both boys to participate, since they were assigned to different age categories and I can only be in one place at one time. Preston didn't seem to mind sitting this year out. Tyson enjoyed the hunt and was able to fill his basket.

I suggested to Tyson that he give some of his eggs to Preston since Preston didn't get any of his own. Tyson didn't like this idea. But he liked the idea of emptying all the candy from the eggs into his basket and putting the empty eggs in Preston's basket. Preston was thrilled. He kept saying, "Egg! Egg! Egg!"

Before we left the park Tyson insisted on seeing the Easter Bunny. He asked me if it was the real Easter Bunny or if it was just a guy in a suit. I told him it was just a guy in a suit. He must not have trusted me because he wanted to see for himself, just in case. After an experience at Walmart with this Easter Bunny, I knew Preston wanted nothing to do with him so we kept our distance.

This is the best picture I could get of the two of them.

Volcano Virtuoso

After putting Preston to bed a few nights ago, I decided to let Tyson stay up with me while I watched American Idol. He quickly became bored of the show and disappeared for awhile. He came back asking for help with the scotch tape. He was making a book. He had finished the illustrations and wanted to assemble the book before he wrote the text.

No picture will adequately capture the character of this book. So you will have to visualize it.

It's seven sheets of paper haphazardly taped together on one end forming a book. Each page is illustrated with crayon drawings of volcanoes.

He wrote "Volkanoz" on the cover in orange crayon.

After the taping was complete he wrote a fact about volcanoes on each page.

(A blue volcano, with red lava and a green dragon)

"Volknoz R Mntinz"

(Volcanoes are Mountains)

"Draginz liv bi Volknoz"

(Dragons live by Volcanoes)

"Volknoz shoot hat lovu"

(Volcanoes shoot hot lava)

"Volknoz urupt on vilijiz."

(Volcanoes erupt on villages)

He is so proud of his book and so am I.

Confusing? I Think Not.

What Do These Things Have in Common?

Besides the fact that these are all things my kid loves, the REAL thing they have in common is:

Preston calls them ALL Elmo!

Preston either doesn't know or doesn't care that all Sesame Street characters are not named Elmo. Cookie, Big Bird, Zoe, Oscar, it doesn't matter. They are all Elmo to him.

His diapers are Elmo because Elmo's face is on each one. His cups are Elmo simply because one or two of his cups have Elmo on them, therefore all cups are called Elmo. Preston will say to me,

"Mo, Mo, Elmo."

This means, "More milk please, in my sippy cup." This sentence is usually followed by him hanging from the handle of the fridge.

Wordless Wednesday

Bird Watching

Preston has been fascinated with birds the last few weeks. He gets so excited anytime he sees or hears a bird. Unfortunately, birds have been in short supply with the snowy, windy weather we have been enjoying.

This week the sun came out, and the birds came back. Preston will sit for "hours" (not really hours because he is a busy 18 month little boy, but you get the idea) at the window saying:

"Bo! Bo!"

"Hi Bo!"

"Bye, Bo"

To his dismay, the birds don't like to stay forever. So I thought I would entice them with a little snack.

So far it's working. I can unload the dishwasher/use the bathroom/stir dinner/make a phone call/ etc. while he is bird watching.

He loves it. I love it.

It's Win Win.

Before and After

Remember this post from last year?

Well, Walmart is officially finished.

(The view from my back porch)

So far I have not noticed an increase in traffic in my neighborhood, or an increase in noise. We didn't get dust or mice from the construction. And we've enjoyed watching the building progress all year.

(Zoomed in)

It's too early to tell if the wildlife is gone. We had deer up until the week of the grand opening, but none since. I still have hope they will be back. We don't usually see the pheasant until summer and we still have our birds.

So far so good.

Click HERE for a little more Mormon humor today.

His Lucky Day

"Hey Mom, I want a turn"

"This is so cool!"

"I have a new job!"

"It's my lucky day!"

Weird Weather

I know we are all loving this beautiful spring weather, right?

I know you can't tell, but it is actually snowing in this picture.

Beautiful blue sky and falling snow.

I think Mother Nature is a little confused.

A Great Day in the Adoption World

As you have noticed I have three adoptive families spotlighted in my sidebar. They are all near and dear to my heart. They are all in different stages of the adoption process. Yesterday was a great day for two of them.

First Aaron and Michelle have been waiting patiently for their home study to be officially approved. (A Home study is an insane amount of paperwork/busywork in which you have to prove that you are a good person and can be a good parent. It takes months to complete. A current home study is required to adopt.) Their home study had stalled due to Michelle's background check. Michelle is one of the sweetest people I have ever met. She would never hurt a flea. I'm sure her mattress still has it's Do Not Remove Under Penalty of Law tags. And yet her background check was holding them up. It turns out that it was lost in the mail.

Are you kidding me?

Yesterday they finished crossing their t's and dotting their i's. Their home study is complete, and their profile is up and running! Yeah! Now the real waiting begins. Check out their brand-new on-line profile here.

Second,

Mike and Emily

are bringing baby Collin home!

You can read about their absolutely horrendous experience on their blog. Baby Collin is 5 1/2 weeks old. They have been fighting a legal battle to bring him home this whole time. I can't tell you how excited I am for them. Their road to parenthood has not been easy. They lost their first two children in infancy to rare medical conditions. Still hoping to be parents in this lifetime, they turned to adoption. Their adoption journey has been difficult to say the least. This unnecessary legal battle was the last straw. Talk about kicking someone when they are already down! I am so happy to see it end. I can't to meet little Collin.

Yeah for Adoption!